The Leopard Prince

Harry shook his head. “And she has many more horses than my one.”

“Then what can you give her?”

“I don’t know.”

He didn’t know what she wanted from him. Harry frowned into the dregs of his tea. What could a man like him give a lady like her? Not money or a house. She already had that. And the physical love he gave her—any halfway competent man could do as well. What could he give her that she didn’t already have? Maybe nothing. Maybe she would realize that soon enough, and especially after last night, choose never to see him again.

Harry stood. “More important than a present, I need to speak to Lady Georgina today.” He moved to the cupboard, took down his shaving things, and began stropping his razor.

Will looked at the dirty plates on the table. “I can wash these.”

“Good boy.”

Will must have refilled the kettle after making tea. It was already full and boiling. Harry divided the hot water between his basin and a big bowl the boy could wash the dishes in. The little mirror he used for shaving showed a ragged face. Harry frowned, then carefully started scraping the stubble from his cheeks. His razor was old but very sharp, and a nick on his chin wouldn’t help his appearance. Behind him, he could hear Will swishing in the water.

By the time Will finished the dishes, Harry was as ready as he was ever going to be. He’d washed, brushed his hair, and changed into a clean shirt. His head still pounded steadily, but the circles under his eyes had begun to fade.

Will looked him over. “You’ll do, I guess.”

“Ta.”

“Am I to stay here?” The lad’s face was too stoic for his young age.

Harry hesitated. “Would you like to see the Woldsly stables while I speak to my lady?”

Will was immediately on his feet. “Yes, please.”

“Then come on.” Harry led the way out the door. The boy could ride behind him on the back of his horse.

Outside, clouds gathered in the sky. But it hadn’t yet rained today, and saddling the mare would take time. It was unreasonable, but he was anxious to see Lady Georgina.

“Let’s walk.”

The boy followed at his heels, silent, but with suppressed excitement. They were almost to the Woldsly drive when Harry heard the rumbling of carriage wheels. He quickened his pace. The sound grew rapidly closer.

He broke into a run.

Just as he burst from the cover of the copse, a carriage passed, shaking the ground beneath his feet and sending up globs of mud. He glimpsed her ginger hair, then the carriage turned the corner and was gone, only the diminishing sound of wheels marking its passage.

“Don’t think you’ll be able to talk to her today.”

Harry had forgotten Will. He stared blindly down at the boy panting at his side. “No, not today.”

A fat raindrop splattered on his shoulder, and then the clouds let go.

TONY’S CARRIAGE JOLTED AROUND the corner, and George swayed as she peered out the window. It had begun to rain again, soaking the already sodden pastures, dragging tree branches earthward, and turning everything into the same gray-brown color. Monotonous veils of dingy water fell, blurring the landscape and trickling down the window like tears. From inside the carriage it appeared that the whole world wept, overcome by a grief that would not fade.

“Perhaps it won’t stop.”

“What?” Tony asked.

“The rain,” George said. “Perhaps it won’t stop. Perhaps it will continue forever until the mud in the highway turns to a stream and rises up and becomes a sea and we float away.” She traced a finger through the condensation on the inside of the window, making squiggly lines. “Do you think your carriage is buoyant?”

“No,” Tony said. “But I shouldn’t worry. The rain will stop sometime, even if it doesn’t seem so at the moment.”

“Mmm.” She stared out the window. “And if I don’t care if it goes on? Perhaps I wouldn’t mind floating away. Or sinking.”

She was doing the right thing, everyone assured her so. Leaving Harry was the only proper choice left to her. He was of a lower class, and he resented the difference in their ranks. Last night, he’d been ugly in his resentment; and yet, she couldn’t fault him. Harry Pye wasn’t meant to be anyone’s lapdog. She hadn’t thought she was confining him, but he obviously felt demeaned. There was no future for them, an earl’s daughter and a land steward. They knew that; everyone knew that. This was a natural conclusion to an affair that should never have been begun in the first place.

But, still, George couldn’t shake the feeling that she was running away.

As if reading her thoughts, Tony said, “It’s the correct decision.”

“Is it?”

“There was no other.”

“I feel like a coward,” she mused, still looking out the window.

“You’re not a coward,” he said softly. “This course wasn’t easy for you, I know. Cowards are people who take the least difficult path, not the hardest.”

“Yet I’ve abandoned Violet when she needs me most,” George objected.

“No, you haven’t,” Tony said firmly. “You’ve turned her problem over to me. I’ve sent Oscar and Ralph ahead of us to London. By the time we arrive, they should have learned where this cad lives. In the meantime, rusticating for another few weeks in the country won’t hurt her, and she has Miss Hope to keep her company. That is what we pay her for, after all,” he finished dryly.

But Euphie had failed Violet once already. George closed her eyes. And what about the poisoned sheep—the reason she’d traveled to Yorkshire in the first place? The attacks were growing more frequent. As she’d left, George had overheard two footmen talking about a poisoned woman. She should’ve stopped and found out if the dead woman was connected to the sheep, but instead she’d let Tony hustle her out the door. Once she’d made the decision to leave Woldsly, it was as if a strange lethargy had taken over her body. It was so hard to concentrate. So hard to know what to do. She felt wrong in her bones, but she couldn’t seem to make things right.

“You must stop thinking about him,” Tony said.

His tone made George glance at her brother, sitting in the blood-red leather seat across from hers. Tony looked sympathetic and worried. And sad, his shaggy eyebrows drawn down. Sudden tears clouded her eyes, and she turned to the window again, although she couldn’t see a thing now.

“It’s just that he was so… good. He seemed to understand me in a way nobody has before, not even you or Aunt Clara. And I couldn’t figure him out.” She laughed under her breath. “Maybe that’s what attracted me to him. He was like a puzzle that I could have spent the rest of my life studying and never grow tired of.” They rumbled over a bridge. “I don’t think I’ll ever find that again.”

“I’m so sorry,” Tony said.

George laid her head back on the seat. “You’re awfully kind for a brother. Did you know that?”

“I’ve been most lucky in my allotment of sisters.” Tony smiled.

George tried to smile back but found she couldn’t. She went back to looking out the carriage window instead. They passed a field of drenched sheep, poor miserable creatures. Could sheep swim? Maybe they’d float if their pasture flooded, like tufts of down in a puddle.

They were already out of her lands, and in another day Yorkshire would be behind them altogether. By the end of the week she’d be in London, resuming her life as if this trip had never happened. Three or four months from now, Harry, acting as her land steward, might write to ask if she wanted him to present his report on her lands in person. And she, having just returned from a soiree, might turn the letter over in her hand and muse, Harry Pye. Why, I once lay in his arms. I looked up into his illuminated face as he joined his flesh with mine, and I was alive. She might toss the letter on her desk and think, But that was so long ago now and in a different place. Perhaps it was only a dream.

She might think that.

George closed her eyes. Somehow she knew that there would never come a day when Harry Pye was not her first memory when she woke and her last thought as she drifted into sleep. She would remember him all the days of her life.

Remember and regret.

“TOLD YOU NOT TO HAVE no truck with aristo ladies.” Dick Crumb sat down across from Harry without invitation late that afternoon.

Wonderful. Now he was getting romantic advice from Dick. Harry studied the Cock and Worm’s proprietor. Dick looked like he’d been sampling too much of his own brew. His face was creased with sleeplessness, and his hair was thinner, if that was possible.

“Aristos ain’t nothing but trouble. And here’s you, sticking your meat where it don’t belong.” Dick wiped his face.

Harry glanced at Will sitting beside him. He’d finally bought him new shoes this morning. The boy’s eyes had been fixed on his feet, swinging under the table, the entire time they’d been in the tavern. But now he was staring at Dick.

“Here.” Harry dug a few coppers out of his pocket. “Go see if the baker has any sweet buns left.”

Will’s attention was immediately caught by the coins. He grinned up at Harry, grabbed the money, and was out the door in a flash.

“That’s Will Pollard, ain’t it?” Dick asked.

“Aye,” Harry said. “His gran abandoned him.”

“So he’s living with you now?” Dick’s long forehead wrinkled in confusion, and he swiped his cloth over it. “How’s that?”

“I have room. I’ll have to find him a better home soon, but for now, why not?”

“I dunno. Don’t he get under foot when she comes calling?” The older man leaned forward and lowered his voice, but his whisper was loud enough to be heard clear across the room.

Harry sighed. “She’s gone back to London. It won’t come up.”

“Good.” Dick took a giant gulp from the mug he’d set down in front of him when he’d joined Harry. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but it’s for the best. Common folk and gentry ain’t meant to mix. That’s the way God intended it. They stay in their marble halls with their servants to wipe their arses—”

“Dick—”

“And we do an honest day’s work and go home to a hot meal. If we’re lucky.” Dick slammed down his mug to make his point. “And that’s the way it’s meant to be.”

“Right.” Harry hoped to stem this sermon.

No such luck.

“And what would you do with the lady if she’d have you?” the older man plowed on. “She’d have your dangly bits hanging by her bed for a bellpull afore a week was out. You’d probably have to wear a pink wig and yellow hose, learn to do that tippy-toe dancing the gentry do and beg like a dog to have your own pin money. No”—he took another swallow of ale—“that ain’t no life for a man.”

“I agree.” Harry cast about for a change of subject. “Where’s your sister? I haven’t seen Janie lately.”

Out came the cloth. Dick polished the dome of his head. “Oh, you know Janie. She were born a bit off, and ever since Granville got done with her, she’s been even worse.”

Harry slowly set down his mug. “You didn’t tell me that Granville had abused Janie.”

“Didn’t I?”

“No. When did this happen?”

“Fifteen years ago. It wasn’t long after your mother caught that fever and died.” Dick wiped his face and neck almost frantically now. “Janie was five and twenty or thereabouts, a grown woman, except maybe in her head. Anyone but Granville would’ve respected that. Would’ve let her alone. But him.” Dick spat onto the flagstones at his feet. “He just saw her as easy pickings.”